Clarity gives you minecraft in a clear, no-nonsense way. Very low noise, very high visibility.
Playing with Clarity is a much calmer experience than vanilla, or even many simplified packs. When there is less noise, there are fewer things calling for your attention. When differences are clear, information you need is easily in your grasp. The visual world demands less of you, and you play with less distraction and more confidence
.
The design guidelines are:
What is different looks different, what is related looks related.
Cleanliness balanced with elegance.
Low noise.
Fidelity with vanilla: If blocks are used to create a certain feel in vanilla, the feel should be similar in Clarity.
Recognizability: You should be able to naturally know what's what.
The pack is quite complete, with all blocks, all mobs, most items, all UI, and all paintings. Almost all are 16x16, but a few are larger where it reduced noise a lot (for example, curved rail).
Example: Harvest-ready crops stand out clearly from the rest, and each crop can be told from the other:
Example: You can see which way hoppers are pointing:
Here the hopper at upper right feeds the one to the left, which feeds towards you until items reach the last hopper, which goes downward:
Example: Multiracial, gender-neutral villagers with with clothes that match their roles:
Example: Cleaner, far less noisy UI elements:
Example: Ores are visible above lava and water:
There are several things which the default textures hide, and Clarity makes clear:
There are actually two stages of sapling, eight stages of carrots and potatoes, four stages of nether wart, and five stages of growing chorus flower.
How wet is the farmland? There are eight levels.
How much power the light and heavy pressure plates are generating is indicated by border pixels.
Similarly, how much power the daylight detectors are generating is shown by lighting up cells.
The compass changes depending on where you are pointed. (It can be inaccurate, but at least Clarity tries to show you.)
Example: Redstone is as clear as possible. Here is a pressure plate with five items:
Example: Each plant stage has different images. Here are eight stages of potatoes and carrots, four of nether wart, and six of chorus flower.
The obligatory overview:
The Clarity Family
Clarity is actually a small family of packs:
Clarity has edges around most blocks to make it easy to count them, and see where blocks begin and end.
Continuity has almost no edges, giving a continuous experience of the world.
Connectivity adds dozens of connected textures that work with both Clarity and Continuity.
Changes adds seasons to the trees with both Clarity and Continuity (must be above them in your resource options). The seasons stretch over a year of minecraft time, so don't expect quick changes!
Beguile is just the UI elements, so you can have the clean UI with any pack you like!
The following image illustrates the differences:
Here are pictures of each season. The season changes are smoothly animated. In game time, fall and spring are about two weeks each, and winter eight weeks; the rest is summer. (Yes, it's a little ugly in winter without leaves; I've lived through winter, trust me, that's verisimilitude...)
Details
For this who care, here are some details of the approach:
All mobs are modified, but for many of them, the primary goal is simply noise reduction. Chickens, polar bears, endermen, etc., are primarily changed to simpler swaths of color.
Items are about ⅔ done. As with mobs, many look good just with noise reduced.
Fire, water, lava, and most particles are untouched on purpose. There was little change that improved them, and they are by nature rather noisy so it made sense to leave them as such.
Animated connected textures to match animated bordered ones.
I still expect to do more items, when I can figure out ways to reduce their noise without increasing the resolution. Or maybe I will just give in to more higher-resolution items. And I may find a good hi-res font to integrate. For now, pick your favorite!
In doing this pack, I was originally inspired by the oCd pack by FVDisco. I liked it at first, but eventually its rigid blockiness turned me off. I started by modifying how far down the side of the block grass spilled, and eventually replaced most everything. But I would not have started if oCd wasn't almost but not quite the way I liked it, and my choices were influenced by it.
I also took some inspiration from the Paper Cut Out resource pack by SuperAlgae. Which I really like.
Thanks! You should check out my 1.11 version, which has some new features about redstone and plants, plus villagers, including an elegant Vindicator in a suit!
(As for pixel art, I'm self-trained, I have nothing to offer, sorry... :-( )
Clarity 1.11.2
Clarity gives you minecraft in a clear, no-nonsense way. Very low noise, very high visibility.
Playing with Clarity is a much calmer experience than vanilla, or even many simplified packs. When there is less noise, there are fewer things calling for your attention. When differences are clear, information you need is easily in your grasp. The visual world demands less of you, and you play with less distraction and more confidence
The design guidelines are:
The pack is quite complete, with all blocks, all mobs, most items, all UI, and all paintings. Almost all are 16x16, but a few are larger where it reduced noise a lot (for example, curved rail).
Download
Download version 1.11.2 from our our web site, which also has more information.
Examples
Example: Harvest-ready crops stand out clearly from the rest, and each crop can be told from the other:
Example: You can see which way hoppers are pointing:
Example: Multiracial, gender-neutral villagers with with clothes that match their roles:
Example: Cleaner, far less noisy UI elements:
Example: Ores are visible above lava and water:
There are several things which the default textures hide, and Clarity makes clear:
Example: Redstone is as clear as possible. Here is a pressure plate with five items:
Example: Each plant stage has different images. Here are eight stages of potatoes and carrots, four of nether wart, and six of chorus flower.
The obligatory overview:
The Clarity Family
Clarity is actually a small family of packs:
Clarity has edges around most blocks to make it easy to count them, and see where blocks begin and end.
Continuity has almost no edges, giving a continuous experience of the world.
Connectivity adds dozens of connected textures that work with both Clarity and Continuity.
Changes adds seasons to the trees with both Clarity and Continuity (must be above them in your resource options). The seasons stretch over a year of minecraft time, so don't expect quick changes!
Beguile is just the UI elements, so you can have the clean UI with any pack you like!
The following image illustrates the differences:
Here are pictures of each season. The season changes are smoothly animated. In game time, fall and spring are about two weeks each, and winter eight weeks; the rest is summer. (Yes, it's a little ugly in winter without leaves; I've lived through winter, trust me, that's verisimilitude...)
Details
For this who care, here are some details of the approach:
I still expect to do more items, when I can figure out ways to reduce their noise without increasing the resolution. Or maybe I will just give in to more higher-resolution items. And I may find a good hi-res font to integrate. For now, pick your favorite!
Download
Download the latest from our our web site, which also has more information.
Credits
In doing this pack, I was originally inspired by the oCd pack by FVDisco. I liked it at first, but eventually its rigid blockiness turned me off. I started by modifying how far down the side of the block grass spilled, and eventually replaced most everything. But I would not have started if oCd wasn't almost but not quite the way I liked it, and my choices were influenced by it.
I also took some inspiration from the Paper Cut Out resource pack by SuperAlgae. Which I really like.
I did a lot of my testing in QMAGNET's test map, thanks!
I did additional testing in PonzooSaus's test map, very helpful!
Authors: BlueMeanial, with JUMBOshrimp277 aiding and abetting, doing many of the items, and advising on many other points of design and deployment.
Thanks! You should check out my 1.11 version, which has some new features about redstone and plants, plus villagers, including an elegant Vindicator in a suit!
(As for pixel art, I'm self-trained, I have nothing to offer, sorry... :-( )
Updated for 1.11.2!